St. Paul will not automatically plow a residential street after a snowfall, regardless of how much snow is on the ground.

Unlike some suburbs, the city’s Public Works Department doesn’t plow most residential streets unless a snow emergency has been declared.

There’s good reason for that, say city officials. But a new survey shows the department has sometimes fallen short when it comes to explaining the logic to St. Paul residents.

For starters, as opposed to St. Paul residents, suburban homeowners are more likely to have access to multi-car garages and wide driveways. That makes it easier to move their cars from public rights-of-way.

“They see that residential streets are plowed in Maplewood,” said St. Paul Public Works Director Kathy Lantry. “Well, that’s because they have a winter parking ban. You can’t park anywhere overnight in the winter in Maplewood.”

The citywide survey commissioned by St. Paul Public Works finds that St. Paul residents are generally satisfied with winter plowing, but that communication could improve.

The survey asked residents for their opinion of the department’s performance with regard to winter street maintenance, snow emergencies and snow events.

The results may strike some skeptics as surprisingly sunny, given the city’s recent history with tough road conditions.

In December 2013, the mayor’s office removed an assistant city engineer from his role as head of St. Paul’s street maintenance program after a snowfall left many streets packed with ice.

Residents said at the time that streets appeared easier to navigate across the river in Minneapolis.

In response, the St. Paul Public Works Department also committed to increasing its fleet of snow plows and lifted a self-imposed cap that limited the amount of sand and salt the city can pour to 400 pounds per lane mile.

The new survey, which was sent to 1,400 randomly sampled residents, was conducted by Civic Consulting and QEM, an independent research group. About 400 residents responded, and two-thirds of them have lived in the city for 11 or more years. The majority were Caucasian and homeowners.

The survey found that 58 percent of respondents expected residential streets to be plowed within 24 hours of any snow falling, which doesn’t follow city policy.

“A majority of folks think that once we’re done plowing major streets, we’re going to plow their residential street. That’s not the way it works,” Lantry said.

Effective plowing would require drivers to move their parked cars out of the way or risk being clipped by the plows and boxed in by snow.

While Public Works is regularly plowing busy arterial streets, the city waits to announce parking restrictions on residential streets until there’s at least 3 inches of snow accumulation on the ground.

“We don’t have parking restrictions during a snow event, only during a snow emergency,” Lantry said. “We can plow streets beautifully when there’s no cars on them. We don’t want to tag cars. We don’t want to tow cars. We want to clear streets.”

Minneapolis isn’t entirely immune to similar criticisms. In January, a resident posted the following to the city’s online message board:

“The only time I feel we see snow plows in Minneapolis is when a snow emergency is declared. After those 72 hours, the plows seem to completely disappear.

“Minneapolis needs to do a better job keeping residential streets plowed during the winter. It is noticeable when you compare how well plowed neighboring streets are in cities such as St. Louis Park and Edina.”

Minneapolis officials have said the city used to field any number of angry calls about towed cars during snow emergencies, but public perception changed in the mid-1990s. The majority of calls now come from residents complaining that an illegally parked car was not towed, resulting in poor snow clearing.

In St. Paul, survey findings showed that more than 75 percent of respondents think the overall effectiveness of snow emergencies is satisfactory or better and that nearly 80 percent think the city’s communication is satisfactory or better during a snow emergency.

There were some notable differences among respondents of different age groups, and by ward. Older residents were more likely to be satisfied than younger residents with the department’s performance during snow emergencies.

On the other hand, older residents were less likely to be satisfied with their ability to access commercial-area sidewalks and public transportation in the winter.

Residents were asked whether they felt the quality of winter street services in their neighborhood was at least as good as other neighborhoods or worse.

Respondents in Wards 1 and 7 were more likely to report “worse.” Ward 1 includes the Frogtown, Summit-University and Union Park areas and Ward 7 spans several East Side neighborhoods, such as Dayton’s Bluff, Battle Creek and Highwood.

Asked if they were satisfied or dissatisfied with the quality of snow removal during a snow emergency, respondents in Wards 4 and 5 were the most likely to respond “dissatisfied.” In Ward 2, the responses broke even.

Ward 4 includes St. Anthony Park, Hamline-Midway and part of Como Park; Ward 5 includes Como, the North End, Railroad Island and Payne-Phalen; and Ward 2 spans downtown St. Paul, Summit Hill, the West Side and West Seventh Street.

In the North End, homeowners have complained to their neighborhood planning council about the time it takes to clear streets and the amount of ice and snow thrown back onto sidewalks.

“I feel that the residents are pretty accurate stating that the plowing is not as effective (as in other neighborhoods), from what I’ve seen in the North End,” said Kerry Antrim, executive director of the District 6 Planning Council on Front Avenue.

“Plows don’t come back to clear snow once a car that didn’t move during the snow emergency (has been removed),” said Antrim, who noted that the planning council office’s windows are sometimes coated with street muck.

“We have had to call a plow to break up the snow in the curb cuts,” she said. “We also talked to plowers who are in the private sector on why that would happen and were told it is the angle of the plow and the speed of the truck.”

Lantry, who became director of Public Works this year, said improving communication will be a key goal. So will adhering to new performance standards for winter street maintenance.

When snowfall produces less than 3 inches of snow accumulation, Lantry said, she expects that 90 percent of arterials will be plowed within 10 hours of a snow event and that 100 percent of high-priority streets will be “anti-iced” with salt, brine or a similar solution.

“We’ve been working for months to talk about what we should measure,” Lantry said. “We were doing a lot of these things before. Now, we’re measuring it. We want to make sure we can tell people what we’re going to do and when we’re going to do it. And if we can’t reach our goals, we want to explain why.”

The department, which is responsible for 1,874 miles of city streets, has launched a digital newsletter, Public Works Watch, and the Public Works website (StPaul.gov/publicworks) is available in 10 languages.

Public Works recently began issuing snow alerts in four languages — English, Hmong, Somali and Spanish — by subscription at StPaul.gov/snow.

The department also presents information on its Facebook page at fb.com/cityofsaintpaul, and on Twitter at @stpaulpublicw.

Frederick Melo was once sued by a reader for $2 million but kept on writing. He came to the Pioneer Press in 2005 and brings a testy East Coast attitude to St. Paul beat reporting. He spent nearly six years covering crime in the Dakota County courts before switching focus to the St. Paul mayor's office, city council, and all things neighborhood-related, from the city's churches to its parks and light rail. A resident of Hamline-Midway, he is married to a Frogtown woman. He Tweets with manic intensity at @FrederickMelo.

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